


Dirty Socks & Bumped Heads (Or, Just Another Day Helping Veronica Mars)

by petpluto



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Best Friends, Gen, POV Male Character, vm fic rec prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-25
Updated: 2014-01-25
Packaged: 2018-01-10 00:11:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1152478
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/petpluto/pseuds/petpluto
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wallace deals with the consequences a surprise visit from Veronica brings. Namely, getting trapped in a closet in a freshman's dorm room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dirty Socks & Bumped Heads (Or, Just Another Day Helping Veronica Mars)

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Wallace, as perfect as he is, is not and never will be mine.
> 
> This was written for the [vmficrecs Wallace ficlet challenge](http://vmficrecs.tumblr.com/post/73541757759/wallace-appreciation-week-ficlet-challenge).

The thing of it is, Wallace muses as he listens to Veronica’s hastily put together excuse for why she’s in this freshman’s room from the closet she unceremoniously shoved him into, it isn’t like he didn’t expect his day to go this way.

He didn’t plan on ending up in a pile of dirty socks and other clothing items he refuses to even acknowledge, hidden from sight as Veronica play seduces someone just on the other side of a door. But it’s not like this was completely outside the realm of possibilities either.

He sighs and slumps back, cracking his head on a shelf. Just barely manages to hold in some choice words, and hears Vee’s voice getting louder. Covering up what will, inevitably, be brought up as his fault later on when he’s going to want to focus on the whole ‘they got caught’ part of the equation.

And he has a buttload of homework to do, too, because junior year isn’t exactly the cake walk he was hoping it would be. But when Veronica showed up, short skirted and wobbly lipped, he closed his books and put away his pencil and followed her out.

She’s his girl; and when she needs him or wants him around, he’s going to be there for her. It’s his universal truth.

Sure, it’s gotten harder. Her break up with Piz after the whole mess in the cafeteria was a minefield to navigate. Her leaving them entirely for Stanford was something that still stuns him; and he’s had to have more conversations with Piz about his feelings than he has ever had with Vee, no matter what he’s said about girls and their girly girl drama.

For her to come down for a weekend visit is rare in and of itself. He’s had to drag his ass up to her the last four times they hung out, and she’s been waffling on whether or not she’s even coming home for Christmas. Coming to Neptune for Christmas, he corrects. She’s stopped calling this place home. The first time she called and said she was just getting “home”, his heart leapt in his throat and he almost ran to the Mars’ residence, just to see her. But it quickly sank down to the depths of his stomach when she told him about her plans with her roommate that weekend, fruit picking or some such nonsense.

He hates that he hates her absence so much. He hates that he wants her back and close to him. There’s a Vee shaped hole in his life, and even with Piz and his feelings, he thinks sometimes he’s the only one to feel it. Mac shrugs off her disappearing act and keeps on keeping on in a way he hasn’t mastered yet. And it isn’t just the lack of snickerdoodles. 

He gets that feeling, that is, until he sees Echolls skulking around campus, looking for all the world like there’s a Veronica shaped piece missing from his life puzzle as well. And he loathes that he has something in common with the guy, just as he despises the fact that when Vee showed up at his door, he grabbed her and ran before anyone had the chance to see her. This is his time with her. This is him and Vee, like the old days. Before roommates and boyfriends and girlfriends and even Mac, when it was just the two of them doing what she needed to do.

She’d suggested bringing in Mac; it was Mac that brought her this case, some random frosh corrupting files or some such. Mac would be good to have, she’d argued, because Mac was the computer wiz and the two of them would just be bumbling around.

But he’s been studying the master of the puppy eyes for more than a few years now; and he flashed them at her quick and sweet, and she gave in. He has a little fantasy where it’s because there’s a Wallace shaped hole for her, in her new life, and she wanted time with him as badly as he wanted it with her.

Best friends, he thinks, forever. 

He doesn’t hear Vee’s chatter any more. For a hot second, he imagines all sorts of horrible things a maladjusted computer geek could do to his girl detective, while he was guy fridaying it up. 

So he stands up, banging his head again on that damn shelf, and bursts forth, dirty socks tumbling out behind him.

“Yo,” he growls as menacingly as he has figured out how to, “Where’s my -”

And stops, as Veronica and the geek turn and stare at him from the edge of the bed.

With controllers in their hands.

As they play some game.

He blinks a few times, and the geek skitters back.

“Hiya, honey,” Vee coos, and he’s going to need a long, hot shower to recover from that one. “Brandon here was just showing me this game...”

“Uh huh,” Wallace nods, crossing his arms and glaring at her. “And you just forgot about me worrying in that closet?”

“You’ve over exaggerating. I never forgot about you. I just -”

Veronica gives a little hand flutter, and he knows what ‘she just’, and snorts angrily at her. Brandon is eying him warily, and some days it doesn’t pay to be Vee’s bestie. But today, he’s going to make the most of the fact that he’s apparently vaguely intimidating to White Bread. 

“Okay, Brandon, do you have any idea who I am?”

Brandon shakes his head and Wallace sighs internally about the lack of school pride at the collegiate level.

“I am the starting point guard for the Hearst basketball team. Which means that I have about a dozen, bigger, guys I can call on to beat your ass down if you don’t do what I tell you. Got it?”

Brandon scoots further away from Veronica, and nods.

“Here’s what I need you to do: whatever little trolling you’re doing to my friend, you’re going to stop.”

“Uh,” the geek gulps, “which is your friend? Because I’ve written corrupting code for a couple of different -”

He makes his mistake when he glances helplessly at Veronica, who looks like she’s trying to keep from giggling madly at the idea that someone is scared of him. He scowls at her, and Brandon yips. 

“Okay, okay! I’ll stop everything!”

He nods, and glances at Vee once more, who flashes him two thumbs up. “Great. What the hell is wrong with you anyway, fucking up people’s programs?”

The other guy throws on a scowl of his own. “I was trying to figure out a way that I could impress Anonymous. A couple of the guys in the forums were saying I couldn’t do shit. So, I figured if I could implement something here I could then replicate it on a greater scale. You know, get some cred.”

“Lord,” he murmurs, “save me from the angst of college white boys.”

Veronica snorts and stands up, completely abandoning her awed persona. “Later, Brandon. Along with Wallace and the Hearst basketball team, you should know that if I hear you’re screwing around my friends again, I’ll ruin your life.”

“And how would you do that?”

Brandon looks like he’s getting some of his gumption back, and Wallace crosses over to be near her. Just in case. But Vee rattles off his social security number, and smiles her most wolfish smile.

The kid recoils, and Wallace can’t help but throw his arm around her. Winks at the guy, and then steers Vee out before she can work more of her scary ways.

“That was fun,” she tells him as she breaks free from his grasp and skips down the hallway. “I haven’t done anything like that in about a year.”

“And you did it now?” For this goes unsaid, but he’s sure she can hear it.

She hesitates, looks back at him, and he’s looking at someone smaller and more fragile than his best friend typically lets herself be. “Mac needed help. And I needed to remember.”

He stares at her, and watches as she transforms again. Watches as she puts that delicate bit of herself away.

“I’m starving,” she tells him, and he knows that they’re not going to have that conversation now. Or maybe ever. Because Veronica Mars is the master of her own fate, and Wallace Fennel is along for the ride. “I’m thinking - Cho’s Pizza?”

“Whatever my sister from another mister wants,” he declares before swooping her into a hug. “Because it isn’t every day I get to see you. Not anymore.”

She brightens, and squeezes him back. “Excellent. You should come up for spring break. Save me from abject boredom.”

“Yeah,” he tells her after a moment. “Maybe I will.”

The thing about Veronica Mars, he thinks as she chatters animatedly to him about her classes and the food places within walking distance, is that he’s always going to try to save her. Because they save each other. That’s what they do. 

“That’s what bffs are for,” he says out loud, and she glances at him for a second before smiling wide.

Because she gets it too.


End file.
